Thackeray’s upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostling commercial fairground, predominantly driven by acquisitive greed and soulless materialism, in which the narrator himself plays a brilliantly versatile role as a serio-comic observer.Although subtitled A Novel without a Hero,Vanity Fairfollows the fortunes of two contrasting but inter-linked lives: through the retiring Amelia Sedley and the brilliant Becky Sharp, Thackeray examines the position of women in an intensely exploitative male world.WhenVanity Fairwas published in 1848, Charlotte Bront commented: The more I read Thackeray’sworks the more certain I am that he stands alone alone in his sagacity, alone in his truth, alone in his feeling Thackeray is a Titan.